In Seeking For A Breakthrough Between The Traditional And Western Ways

Taking the novel writing of Wu Jianren who was a writer of fictions who lived in the late Qing Dynasty as a study case, this thesis discusses his exploration in seeking a breakthrough between the the traditional and Western way of writing and tells us how Wu Jianren, as one of the most famous writers of fictions in the late Qing Dynasty, tried consciousouly in combining the traditional and Western way of writing novels. It also discusses the ideas that he had inherited from the traditional novels and themes, and how he explored in applying the Western novel writing techniques.In the foreword part, I mainly introduce Wu Jianren's writings as a professional writer of fictions who once worked a a newspaperman of China in modern times, what social problems his works had reflected and the vital significance of the problems. I also explain the status quo of research in his works and the questions that I want to discuss further. The questions include the breakthroughs in his ironic style compared with Informal History for Academia, the differences in his sentiment novel themes with A Dream in Red Mansions, the relationships of his historic novel Painful History with Outlaws of the Marsh and Romance of the Three Kinddoms, his writing of short novels, the appearance of tragedy consciousness in his novels and the tragic and ironic endings of his novels.Then I divide the thesis into three chapters to elaberate the questions I listed above from three different aspects, that is, comments on Wu Jianren's novel writing, his inheritance of traditional classical novels and the influence of Western novels' on him.In the first chapter I introduced separately the writings, main themes and achievements of his historical, social, sentiment, joke and scientific novels.In the second chapter, I laid emphasis on introducing his inheritance of traditional classical novels by comparing his works with the ancient stories Informal History for Academia, A Dream in Red Mansions, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh in order to demonstrate Wu Jianren's inheritance and breakthroughs in his writing.In the third chapter, I mainly discussed the influence of Western novels' on him by analyzing the innovation in narrative pattern, the short novel writing and the initial tragedy consciousness that formed slowly, as well as his comparatively mature writing techniques.In the conclusion part, I drew a conclusion by establishing his status in modern History of literature. As a master of novels and a famous critic in late Qing dynasty's novel criticism history, his novels played a very inportant role in linking the preceding with the following. His inheritance of the traditional culture and refrence to the Western literature enabled his novel to become a wonder in the combination of Chinese and Western cultures, thus enabling him to possess a very important status in the Chinese modern times novel History which cannot be substituted.